As you are probably aware, there are many IT services available, and each and every company regardless of its size and trade can benefit from them. But, have you ever heard of Health Information Technology (Health IT)? In the following text, we are going to introduce you to these professionals and tell you more about their work.
Basically, these IT experts manage all kinds of patient health information with the goal of improving patient care. Their work is of tremendous importance because they manage different systems of patient’s private information. Some of these IT teams collaborate with many clinics and hospital all around the world such as mental health facilities, long-term care facilities, acute care hospitals, and outpatient clinics and so on, while other work with non-medical organizations such as consulting firms, insurance companies, and public health and other government agencies. Furthermore, health IT professional might even train nurses, physicians, and others how to use EHR (electronic health records) software. There are numerous companies that offer this kind of service and one of them is Global Data Systems.
The biggest misconception is that all teams do the same work and in the same environment. Unlike people who work in an IT department within some company, and whose main job is to ensure the technical stability of that business, health IT professionals deal with medical terminology, clinical documentation, and there is a specific set of skills they must possess. Those skills include the understanding of information and technology systems, programming, data structures, data and information storage systems, etc.
Their main job is to ensure that caregivers get all information about specific patients quickly and without any trouble. There are three main departments:
- Health IT – they work on implementation and support of EHRs
- Health information management (HIM) – these professional work on organizing patient data
- Data analytics – IT experts analyze all data available and write reports
In addition, their most important task is to ensure that all patients’ records and private information are safely stored.
When it comes to the organization of these teams, it depends on the size of a healthcare organization. In case of a smaller facility, technicians need different knowledge in order to work with several EHR systems. On the other hand, in larger organizations, there are different teams of people and usually, each one of them is specialized in a certain type of work.
If you are intrigued by this line of work, keep on reading, and find out how to become one of health IT professionals. It is necessary that you possess knowledge of how health organizations work and also you have to have a set of specific skills so you can manage EHR systems within these organizations. These IT professionals come from different backgrounds – from computer science and medical coding to radiology and nursing. Depending on your previous experience, there are many job positions you can apply for such as EHR implementation specialist, programmer analyst, consultant, software developer and software engineer, and many more. Since you will be collaborating with many people on a daily basis, you have to possess excellent communication skills.
To conclude, we have told you about some main features of this line of work. As you can see, this work is extremely important and is a crucial part of every successful health care organization.
Nina Smith 
Nicola Holder